Graham Packaging receives SPC Innovation in Recovery award

The Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC), Charlottesville, Virginia, has awarded Graham Packaging, a manufacturer and designer of sustainable packaging solutions, with its Innovation in Recovery award. SPC’s Innovator Awards celebrate and showcase people and organizations that have made advancements in packaging sustainability, the coalition states on its website.

The SPC recognized Graham Packaging’s returnable, refillable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) containers as a sustainability solution that results in 47 percent longer reuse cycles than its previous generation of REFPET bottles.

According to a news release from Graham Packaging, which is headquartered in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, its REFPET containers have been used to package beverages for large, well-known brands for more than 30 years, but a recent upgrade solved a challenge that most reusable packaging faces.

“When a bottle is reused, significant wear and scuffing can occur, which reduces the number of times the bottle can be reused before its aesthetic properties become unacceptable,” Graham Packaging states. “To combat this problem, Graham added a bubble texture to their REFPET Generation III bottles. This texture has increased the containers’ average number of reuse cycles from 17 to 25. The SPC recognized this effort by awarding Graham with a 2020 Innovator Award for Innovation in Recovery.”

“For us, sustainability is a part of everything we do, and innovation is core to who we are,” says Tracee Auld, chief sustainability officer at Graham Packaging Co. “To be recognized by a body such as the Sustainable Packaging Coalition says a lot about where we are already and where we need to continue to focus our efforts to deliver innovative, sustainable products.”